African Boy with Mural Crown

Entry

There has been much speculation regarding the meaning of this marble sculpture of an African boy since its acquisition by the Rijksmuseum in 1972: Whom or what does the sculpture depict? In what manner must one interpret the various attributes? What was its original function?

The young boy supports himself with his left hand on a flat-topped tree stump adorned with geometric motifs. His right foot rests atop a turtle’s back; in his right hand, he clasps a scroll. Upon his breast is a noticeably large medallion bearing an all’antica profile portrait of a bearded man (Homer?), that hangs from a triple chain worn around his neck. A striped robe falls down over the shoulders and drapes across his lap, held in place by a band of coral beads and ostrich feathers. He wears antique-style sandals tied with ribbons wrapping around his lower legs and with decorative shields protecting the instep of his semi-bare feet. At its base, the mural crown he wears follows the contours of his head. The battlements lining the crown’s perimeter at the top, however, form a square, with portcullis gates, windows and rusticated stone all finely executed in great detail. The classical plinth on which the figure stands bears an elongated cartouche in front, void of any inscription. The maker’s signature and the date are incised along the plinth’s right side: IOANNES CLAUD DE COC[K] ƒ[ecit] Anno 1704.

Johannes (‘Jan’) Claudius de Cock (1667-1735) is considered one of the most important sculptors of the late Flemish Baroque. Having worked as an apprentice to Pieter Verbruggen I (1615-1686), De Cock remained associated with the Verbruggen workshop in Antwerp after the master’s death in 1686. Between 1692 and 1695/97, he worked on the sculptural decoration of the Castle of Breda under King-Stadholder William III.¹ It was likely during this same period that he was commissioned to make two terracotta portrait busts of former Orange princes, both today preserved at the Rijksmuseum (BK-B-53 and BK-AM-68). Upon returning to Antwerp, De Cock established his own workshop, chiefly specialized in the large-scale production of religious (altarpieces, pulpits, tomb monuments) and profane (garden statues, busts) sculptures, both per commission as well as works destined for the free market. His work was also in demand in the Northern Netherlands, as affirmed by an advertisement appearing in the Dutch newspaper Haagsche Courant on 29 September 1734: ‘Readily available for sale, very beautifully carved Small Marble Groups, Children and Busts, made by De Kok, Albert Xavery, Van Logteren, and other honourable Masters. All are daily on view at the home of J.B. Xavery, Master Sculptor in ’s-Gravenhage [The Hague]’.²

Throughout most of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, statuettes of chubby putti, then commonly referred to as kinderkens (small children), were extremely popular. Only seldom, however, did they take the form of African children. All the more remarkable that at least twelve other sculptures of young African boys by De Cock, his workshop and/or his followers are today known to exist.³ One may rightly speak of a specialization, even if the idea and motivation behind these works remains elusive, as does the identity of the patrons/buyers. In a poem about sculpture, De Cock expounds on the proper proportions for small sculptures of children; at no point does he mention themes involving African children.⁴ Did he wish to emulate earlier, perhaps even antique models known to him at the time? Indeed, the earliest known examples of this rare motif date as far back as antiquity.⁵ An association with exotic destinations led to the theme’s popularity during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, especially in painting. In sculpture, examples dating from this period – works surpassing a purely decorative value – include the so-called Borghese Moor by the Frenchman Nicolas Cordier (1567-1612),⁶ and busts by the German sculptor Melchior Barthel (1625-1672).⁷ Like the faces encountered on De Cock’s statues, these figures also look as if they had been sculpted from life. What these (young) adults lack, however, is the strikingly playful character of the Amsterdam boy with the municipal crown.

While purely speculative, one is tempted to tie De Cock’s apparent affinity with children’s figures to his own unusual physiognomy. Jacob Campo Weyerman described the sculptor in fact as ‘a midget of the very smallest sort’.⁸ From the same source we also learn that De Cock was not only known for his ‘appealing, chiselled naked little dwarves’,⁹ but that his house was also filled with ‘Midgets modelled from clay, and small hunchbacked, crooked, bent-over and misformed Figures’.¹⁰ When describing these works as ‘modelled midgets’, Weyerman was probably referring literally to statuettes of midgets, in the same spirit of those produced by the Antwerp sculptor Walter Pompe (1703-1777).¹¹

Seven of the known sculptures depicting African figures associated with De Cock are busts, with six dressed in Western European attire.¹² These works strongly resemble the African boy in the Rijksmuseum and evoke the impression of being portraits modelled after a living person. Consequently, it appears De Cock developed a prototype ‘from life’ – suitable candidates of African heritage are certain to have been amply available in the international harbour of Antwerp – which he then reused as his model. Like the Amsterdam statue, all seven busts wear a noticeably large medallion hanging on a chain about the neck. Five of these medallions contain an all’antica portrait of a male figure shown in profile (Roman emperors, King Juba I, Emperor Rudolph II, King George II), the remaining two a cardinal’s galero.¹³ The prominent display of the medallions on both the statue and the aforementioned busts suggests their function was specifically related to the sculptures’ meaning. The link is obvious in the case of De Cock’s marble bust of a female satyr, who wears a medallion around the neck with an image of the head of the Roman god Pan.¹⁴ Another example is a marble Fama group by Jan Pieter van Baurscheit I (1669-1728) – a contemporary of De Cock’s – which includes a medallion bearing the portrait of the individual honoured.¹⁵ With the bust figures and the Rijksmuseum’s African boy, however, the purpose of the medallions – and especially the images they bear – remains elusive. When considering the frequency of all’antica portraits framed in medallions and cartouches in the work of De Cock and his contemporaries,¹⁶ it appears likely that these motifs should, at least in part, be seen as fashionable decorative elements, with the image possibly specified by the buyer for whom it held a special significance. Yet, if taken seriously, the bestowing of such badges of honour on young African boys – in an enlarged format, with images of illustrious philosophers, princes, and ecclesiastical insignia – would most certainly signify a remarkable breach of decorum for the eighteenth-century beholder. One must therefore consider whether the medallion’s presence on these sculptures of African figures dressed in Western attire was perhaps intended in an ironic sense. Yet in the case of the Rijksmuseum’s jovial boy – depicted in the nude, wearing the mural crown, and radiating more the air of an African princely son than an enslaved boy – such a conclusion seemingly falters.

Similarly, the iconographic aspects of the Amsterdam sculpture provide no precise indication of its meaning or function: the attributes accompanying the African boy can be interpreted in various ways. One obvious possibility is that he personifies Africa in a series of the Continents, a theme encountered on De Cock’s church pulpit in the Sint-Pieterskerk in Turnhout.¹⁷ Discernible traces of natural abrasion on the African boy suggest the statue might have stood in a garden for an extended period of time. Indeed, kinderkens commonly figured in series of garden statues centring on the Elements, Continents, Senses or Seasons. In fact, De Cock is known to have designed a series of the Elements, with Fire personified by an African boy. In most cases, however, personifications of Africa were accompanied by some kind of attribute specifically connected to the continent – lion, elephant’s head, scorpion, bow and arrow, cornucopia or a crown of feathers – none of which are found on the African boy.¹⁸ One other tenable interpretation is that the present statue personifies Earth in a series of the Four Elements, with the mural crown functioning as an attribute of the goddess Cybele as Mother Earth. In this case, the turtle would also have functioned as a symbol of Earth. A symbolism of this nature, however, is not known to occur in combination with a black boy. Also to be noted is the ceremonial sword or club on which the boy leans. Identical ‘weapons’ of this sort appear in paintings by Albert Eckhout (c. 1607-c. 1666) of the Tapuya people in Brazil (fig. a)¹⁹ and a painting by Frans Francken II entitled Allegory of the Abdication of Emperor Charles V (SK-A-112) from circa 1635-40 in the Rijksmuseum. Engravings of Eckhout’s paintings were long a source of inspiration for later generations of artists and may also have served as a model for the sculptor De Cock.²⁰

The latest theory links the African boy to an historical treaty between the Dutch West India Company (WIC) and the Ashanti people signed at Kumasi, a city in the hinterland of what was then known as the Guinean Gold Coast (today Ghana), in the year 1703 – to wit, shortly before the marble’s conception.²¹ For years, trade with the Ashanti was conducted via Fort St. George in Elmina, then the most important Dutch settlement on the Gold Coast and the headquarters of the WIC’s directors-general. From the early eighteenth century on, the Ashanti people had dominated the gold trade along the Gold Coast. The treaty was therefore of great importance to the Dutch, gold being the nation’s most important import product from that region.²² If indeed commissioned to mark this historic treaty, the Rijksmuseum’s statue of an African boy is to be interpreted as a personification of the city St. George d’Elmina, with the mural crown signifying the city’s fort. This would explain the rolled-up document in the boy’s right hand, a symbol of the treaty.²³ Other attributes, in turn, can be understood in the same light, with the medallion referring to the Ashanti people and their great wealth arising from the trade in gold. Even to the present day, extremely large, golden neck medallions form a part of traditional Ashanti dress. The turtle, though by no means necessarily a symbol of Africa, commonly appears in representations of the continent. Jan van Kessel I’s Allegory of Africa (1666) features no less than five turtles: two turtles in the main scene and three on flanking panels, including the view of St. George d’Elmina.²⁴ While the striped sash and the band with corals and feathers may very well allude to exotic regions in a broader sense, they might also be interpreted as essentially African. In the margin of Joan Bleau’s map of Africa from 1645,²⁵ one of the ‘mercatores in Guinea’ wears comparable striped sashes, as does the black archer in Johannes Visscher’s engraving (1650) of the same name.²⁶ On a final note, a club indeed appears in Eckhout’s painting, a typical utilitarian object of the Tapuya people. This does not exclude the possibility that an instrument of such a nature was also used in Guinea. Both the Dutch and Portuguese supplied Brazil with enslaved Africans. Moreover, an active trade had arisen between Africa and Brazil, with African objects making their way to South America. Hanging from the belt worn by Eckhout’s Afro-Brazilian figure is a ceremonial sword of the Akan people, the same ethnic group to which the Ashanti belong.²⁷ The geometric ornamentation adorning the club is in fact highly similar to traditional Ashanti motifs, though one should keep in mind that the ethnographical accuracy of such artistic motifs is questionable. While perhaps a weighty theme for an ostensibly jovial figure, this historical interpretation for the time being best explains the complicated iconography of this extraordinary sculpture.

Titia de Haseth Möller, 2025